Archive for August, 2009

Roy Blount, Jr. Not Exactly What I Had in Mind (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985)

August 30, 2009
By Kevin R. Kosar
Roy Blount, Jr. Not Exactly What I Had in Mind (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985)

Why I Will Never Again Trust Anything Garrison Keillor Says, by Kevin R. Kosar, August 30, 2009 I cannot recall where I found this book, but I snatched it up because I had heard that Blount was a funny writer.  The dust jacket includes effusive praise. Garrison Keillor exclaims, “Roy Bount’s stuff makes me...
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Edward C. Banfield, Government Project: An Account of Big Government in Action (IL: Glencoe, 1951)

August 26, 2009
By Kevin R. Kosar
Edward C. Banfield, Government Project: An Account of Big Government in Action (IL: Glencoe, 1951)

A Retro-Review of Edward C. Banfield’s Government Project: An Account of Big Government in Action, September 2009, by Kevin R. Kosar, August 28,2009 Public Administration Review has just published my retro-review of this terrific book: A Nearly Forgotten Classic in Public Administration: Edward C. Banfield’s Government Project, Public Administration Review, September/October, 2009. As the...
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New York Times’ Story on Federal School Lunch Program

August 19, 2009
By Kevin R. Kosar
New York Times’ Story on Federal School Lunch Program

According to the New York Times: Congress … will take up the Child Nutrition Act as soon as October…. The act, which is reauthorized every five years, provides $12 billion to pay for lunch and breakfast for 31 million schoolchildren. Additionally, The Department of Agriculture is expected to upgrade school food nutrition standards this...
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Lecture on Unintended Consequences and Intended Non-Consequences

August 18, 2009
By Kevin R. Kosar
Lecture on Unintended Consequences and Intended Non-Consequences

Christopher DeMuth, former head of the American Enterprise Institute, and now its D. C. Searle Senior Fellow, gave a lecture  on public policy this past June. He reviewed the neoconservative and Chicago free market criticisms of government action, and focuses much of his lecture on regulatory policy. DeMuth forcefully argued that regulation frequently has...
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New York Times’ Story on New Federal Education Rules

August 17, 2009
By Kevin R. Kosar

Sam Dillon of the New York Times writes Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act...
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My New Book

My Education Politics Book

Recent Reads

Fiction: John Grisham, The Associate (2009).

Non-Fiction: Todd Kliman, The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine (2010).

Non-Fiction: Kathryn A. Jacob, King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age (2010).

Non-Fiction: Philip Terzian, Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century (2010).

Fiction: David Lodge, Thinks (2001)

Non-Fiction: Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition (2010)

Non-Fiction: Christopher Buckley, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir (2009)

Non-Fiction: Alice Cooper, Alice Cooper, Golf Monster (2007)

Fiction: John Le Carre A Most Wanted Man (2008)

Fiction: John Le Carre Our Game (1995)

Fiction: John Le Carre The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)

Fiction: Peter DeVries Into Your Tent I'll Creep (1971)

Fiction: Peter DeVries Peckham's Marbles (1986)

Fiction: Georges Simenon Three Beds in Manhattan (1964)

Fiction: Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day (1988)